Jan Bays next plug for mindfulness is that it "trains and strengthens the mind." (The bit I posted yesterday was that mindfulness 'conserves energy.') Here--as in the title of her book--she's using the same metaphor the Buddha used two and a half millennia ago: taming a wild elephant.
One of the things I especially appreciate about Jan Bays is that she leads a relatively normal life--she's a pediatrician, mother and grandmother (I say relatively because she also lives in a monastery!)
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We are all aware that the human body can be trained (think
of gymnasts, acrobats, ballet dancers, piano players, weight lifters). We are
less aware that there are many aspects of mind that can be cultivated.
When we practice mindfulness, we learn to lift the mind up
out of its habitual preoccupations and place it down in a place of our choosing
in order to illuminate some aspect of our life. We are training the mind to be
light, powerful, and flexible—but also able to concentrate on what we ask it to
focus on.
The Buddha spoke of taming the mind. He said it was like
taming a wild forest elephant. Just as an untamed elephant can do damage,
trampling crops and injuring people, so the untamed, capricious mind can cause
harm to us and those around us. Our human minds have a much larger capacity and
power than we realize. Mindfulness is a potent tool for training the mind,
allowing us to access and use the mind’s true potential for insight, kindness,
and creativity.
…When a wild elephant is first captured and led out of the
jungle, it has to be tethered to a stake. In the case of our mind, that stake
takes the form of whatever we attend to in our mindfulness practice—for example,
the breath….We anchor the mind by returning it over and over to one thing. This
calms the mind and rids it of distractions.
Once our mind is tamed, we can remain calm and stable as we
encounter the inevitable difficulties the world brings us. Eventually we don’t
run from problems but see them as a way to test and strengthen our physical and
mental stability.
Mindfulness helps us become aware of the mind’s habitual and
conditioned patterns of escape and allows us to try an alternative way of being
in the world. That alternative is resting our awareness in the actual events of
the present moment, the sounds heard by the ear, the sensations felt by the
skin, the colors and shapes taken in by the eyes. Mindfulness helps stabilize the
heart and mind so they are not so badly tossed around by the unexpected things
that arrive in our life.
